Middle East Facts: Exposing Arab falsehoods

Exposing Arab falsehoods

Mar 17, 2011

Op-ed: Discourse on Israel-Palestinian conflict based on urban myths, not historical fact

Martin Sherman

“Indeed, at the very heart of the Palestinian struggle is a determination to win back (the) very rights and protections long denied us by Israel.”

Hanan Ashrawi – Palestinians, America and the UN, NYT Jan 20, 2011

“…no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.”

The “Three No’s” of the Arab League in Khartoum, August 29, 1967

“The appearance of a distinct Palestinian national personality comes as an answer to Israel’s claim that Palestine is Jewish.”

King Hussein, Arab League Summit Amman, Nov. 1987

‘There is no middle road’The above citations from Hanan Ashrawi’s recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, Palestinians, America and the UN, and the 1967 Arab League Summits demonstrate just how intellectually corrupt the discourse over the Israel-Palestinian conflict has become; just how much it is driven by false axioms, historical amnesia and the norms of social bon-ton that are woefully dethatched from reality. Indeed, it has become discourse that is based far more on cultural mores and urban myths than on historical fact. It has become a dramatic production where political correctness has taken over the starring role; while that of political truth has been reduced to one of a minor “extra.” Ashrawi’s accusations regarding Israel’s actions reflect the quintessential reasons why the Palestinians find themselves in the miserable state in which they are today: a chronic and cavalier disregard for the truth; an enduring propensity to blame others for their fate; and an obdurate refusal to take responsibility for their own actions – and inaction. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the history of the conflict must be wondering precisely what “rights” the Palestinians are striving to “win back.” After all, until Israel’s presence in the “West Bank”, they not only had no rights as a collective there – they did not even claim any! In fact, they expressly eschewed any such rights! In Article 24 of their 1964 national covenant they explicitly declare that they had no aspirations to “exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (sic), on the Gaza Strip …” Indeed, prior to any Israeli presence in these areas, it was quite clear on which territory Palestinians focused their demands for their “rights.” On November 18, 1965, Egyptian President Nasser declared: “Our aim is the full restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people. In other words, we aim at the destruction of the State of Israel …The national aim: the eradication of Israel.”

Echoing this sentiment in a premature flush of triumph, on June 1, 1967, Arafat’s predecessor, PLO leader Ahmad Shukairy crowed: “This is a fight for the homeland. It is either us or the Israelis. There is no middle road…..We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors – if there are any – the boats are ready to deport them

This resonated well with his previous pronouncements. For example, on May 27, 1967, Shukairy gloated: “D-Day is approaching. The Arabs have waited 19 years for this and will not flinch from the war of liberation.” The use of the words “liberation” and “homeland” is revealing – for at the time, the notions of “occupation” and “settlements” had neither conceptual significance nor practical relevance. Accordingly they could not possibly account for this ferocious hostility towards the Jewish nation-state by the Arabs, who clearly were not seeking “liberation” for the Palestinians in the then Arab-ruled “West Bank” and Gaza which in no way were perceived as the” homeland” targeted for such “liberation” efforts. Furthermore, the allusion to the fact that “Arabs have waited 19 years” is also pregnant with significance – too often ignored or obscured. Indeed, although the West Bank and Gaza were under Arab rule for almost two decades, not the feeblest of efforts was made to establish a Palestinian state on them. Quite the opposite, King Hussein annexed the West Bank in 1950 (an act formally recognized by both Britain and US and de facto by the Arab League) and Palestinians residing in it were granted Jordanian citizenship. Three years later, he annexed east Jerusalem declaring it the “alternative capital of the Hashemite Kingdom” and an “integral and inseparable part” of Jordan. It was not until 1988 when King Hussein relinquished his claim to the territory, now portrayed as the “ancient homeland” of the Palestinians – and stripped its residents of their Jordanian citizenship. Accordingly, a persuasive claim can be made that the “stateless” status of the Palestinians was brought about not by any Israeli action but by that of the Jordanian monarch. In the words of a prominent Palestinian legal expert, Anis F. Kassim: “…over one-and-a-half million Palestinians went to bed on 31 July 1988 as Jordanian citizens, and woke up on 1 August 1988 as stateless persons.”

Take back the narrative

The Gaza example shows how ludicrous Ashrawi’s accusations are, for all Gaza settlements were razed to the ground, hi-tech greenhouses trampled, synagogues desecrated and even cemeteries uprooted. Yet none of this brought any peaceable Palestinian initiative, irrefutably demonstrating that the settlements are an excuse for Palestinian enmity, not a reason for it. Any attempt to ascribe this hostility to” the blockade” should be summarily dismissed with the contempt it deserves. After all, the quarantine of Gaza is a consequence, not a cause, of Palestinian violence against Israel.

So if Israel cannot be blamed for the fate that befell collective rights of the Palestinian – what about their rights as individuals? In this regard the facts are irrefutable and documented. The lot of individual Palestinians improved beyond recognitions under Israeli administration, from 1967 until the early 1990s when “Oslophilic” wisdom began to dominate the discourse and induce the retraction of Israeli presence in the “West Bank” (and Gaza).The hard facts are unequivocal. Israel elevated Palestinian living standards from the virtually medieval levels under the Hashemite regime into those of the 20th Century.
Under Israeli administration, GDP per capita soared by over 10-fold to overtake nearly all Arab countries other than the major oil-exporters, life expectancy climbed from barely 40 to over 70, Infant mortality (deaths per 1000 births) plummeted from 60 to 15 (18 for Gaza), access to safe water grew by 500%, and agriculture underwent a modernizing metamorphosis, adopting modern methods of cultivation irrigation, and processing. Output increased dramatically, transforming it from a subsistence enterprise to a commercial industry.
Similarly, Palestinians were given access to due process within the Israeli judicial system, which often ruled in their favor. Thus although Ashrawi contends that Palestinians “rights and protections enshrined under international law” are trampled by Israel, they were in fact safeguarded manifestly more effectively than under any other regime – whether the Hashemite predecessor or the Palestinian successors. Just ask any Fatah member who was pitched off a multi-storey Gaza high-rise, or had his kneecaps blown away by a kindred Hamas “militant.”

Surely the time has come for Israel to take back the narrative – and rewrite it on the basis of historical realities, not political distortions; on the basis of prevailing realities rather than fabricated fantasies; on the basis of events as they actually occurred, not as they are deceitfully contrived.

80 Theses--Draft for a New Peace Camp

By the Israeli Peace Bloc info@gush-shalom.org

The following document was published (in Hebrew) today April 13 as a whole page ad in Ha'aaretz. You may have seen it already but we want to make sure that you don't miss it. It can be downloaded in Hebrew (also English) from the Gush Shalom website http:www.gush-shalom.org

We think time has come to take certain discussions out of the closet, to campaign widely for a revision of the myths of Zionist history and publicly facing the truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

If you have time and patience, it might be worthwhile to read it carefully. We shall welcome your thoughts, remarks and amendments. This is intended to start a national and international debate.

Gush Shalom Draft - 80 Theses for a New Peace Camp

1.The peace process has collapsed--and taken down with it a large part of the Israeli peace camp.

2.Transient circumstances, such as personal or party-political matters, failures of leadership, political self-interest, domestic and global political developments-- all these are like foam over the waves. Important as they may be, they cannot adequately explain the total collapse.

3.The true explanation can only be found beneath the surface, at the roots of the historical conflict between the two nations.

4.The Madrid-Oslo process failed because the two sides were seeking to realize conflicting goals.

5.The goals of each of the two sides emanated from their basic national interests. They were shaped by their historical narratives, by their disparate views of the conflict over the last 120 years. The Israeli national historical version and the Palestinian national historical version are entirely contradictory, on the whole and in every single detail.

6.The negotiators and the decision-makers on the Israeli side acted in complete oblivion of the Palestinian national narrative. Even when they had sincere good-will to come to a solution, their efforts were doomed to fail as they could not understand the national desires, traumas, fears and hopes of the Palestinian people. While there is no symmetry between the two sides, the Palestinian attitude was similar.

7.Resolution of such a long historical conflict is possible only if each side is capable of understanding the other’s spiritual-national world and willing to approach him as an equal. An insensitive, condescending and overbearing attitude precludes any possibility of an agreed solution.

8.The Barak Government, which had inspired so much hope, was afflicted with all these attitudes, hence, the enormous gap between its initial promise and the disastrous results.

9.A significant part of the old peace camp (also called the "Zionist Left" or the "Sane Constituency") is similarly afflicted and therefore collapsed along with the government it supported.

10.Therefore, the primary role of a new Israeli peace camp is to get rid of the false myths and the one-sided view of the conflict. This does not mean that the Israeli narrative should automatically be rejected and the Palestinian narrative unquestionably accepted. But it does require open-minded listening and understanding of the other position in the historical conflict, in order to bridge the two national narratives.

11.Any other way will lead to an unending continuation of the conflict, with periods of ostensible tranquility and conciliation frequently interrupted by eruptions of violent hostile actions between the two nations and between Israel and the Arab world. Considering the pace of development of weapons of mass destruction, further rounds of hostility could lead to the destruction of all sides to the conflict.

The Root of the Conflict

12.The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the continuation of the historical clash between the Zionist Movement and the Palestinian Arab people, a clash that began at the end of the 19th century and has yet to end.

13.The Zionist Movement was, essentially, a Jewish reaction to the emergence of the national movements in Europe, all of which were hostile to Jews. Having been rejected by the European nations, some of the Jews decided to establish themselves as a separate nation and, following the new European model, to set up their own national State where they could be masters of their own fate. The principle of separation, which formed the basis of the Zionist idea, had far- reaching consequences later on. The basic Zionist tenet, that a minority cannot exist in a national-homogenous state according to the European model, let later to the practical exclusion of the national minority in the Zionist state that came into being after 50 years.

14.Traditional and religious motives drew the Zionist Movement to Palestine (Eretz Israel in Hebrew) and the decision was made to establish the Jewish State in this land. The maxim was "a land without a people for a people without a land". This maxim was not only created out of ignorance, but also out of the general arrogance towards non-European peoples that prevailed in Europe at that time.

15.Palestine was not empty--not at the end of the 19th century nor at any other period. At that time, there were half a million people living in Palestine, 90% of them Arabs. This population objected, of course, to the incursion of another nation into their land.

16.The Arab National Movement emerged almost simultaneously with the Zionist Movement, initially to fight the Ottoman Empire and later to fight the colonial regimes created upon its destruction at the end of World War I. A separate Arab-Palestinian national movement developed in the country after the British created a separate State called "Palestine", and in course of the struggle against the Zionist infiltration.

17.Since the end of World War I, there has been an ongoing struggle between two nationalist movements, the Jewish-Zionist and the Palestinian-Arab, both of which aspired to accomplish their goals -- which entirely negate each other -- within the same territory. This situation remains unchanged to this day.

18.As Jewish persecution in Europe intensified, and as the countries of the world closed their gates to the Jews attempting to flee the inferno, so the Zionist Movement gained strength. The Holocaust, which took the lives of six million Jews, gave moral and political power to the Zionist claim that led to the establishment of the State of Israel.

19.The Palestinian People, witnessing the growth of the Jewish population in their land, could not comprehend why they were required to pay the price for crimes committed against the Jews by Europeans. They violently objected to further Jewish immigration and to the acquisition of lands by the Jews.

20.The complete oblivion of each of the two peoples to the national existence of the other inevitably led to false and distorted perceptions that took root deep in the collective consciousness of both. These perceptions affect their attitude towards each other to this day.

21.The Arabs believed that the Jews had been implanted in the country by Western Imperialism, in order to subjugate the Arab world and take control of its treasures. This conviction was strengthened by the fact that the Zionist movement, from the outset, strove for an alliance with at least one Western power (Germany, Great Britain, France, the U.S.A.) to overcome the Arab resistance. The results were a practical cooperation and a community of interests between the Zionist enterprise and imperialist and colonialist forces, directed against the Arab national movement.

22.The Jews, on the other hand, were convinced that the Arab resistance to the Zionist enterprise -- intended to save the Jews from the flames of Europe -- was the consequence of the murderous nature of the Arabs and of Islam. In their eyes, Arab fighters were "gangs", and the uprisings of the time were called "riots". (Actually, in the 1920’s, the most extreme Zionist leader, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, was almost alone to recognize that the Arab resistance to the Zionist settlement was an inevitable, natural and from this point of view just reaction of a "native" people defending their country against foreign invaders. Jabotinsky also recognized the fact that the Arabs in the country were a separate national entity and derided attempts made to bribe the leaders of other Arab countries to put an end to the Palestinian Arab resistance. However, Jabotinsky’s conclusion was to erect a "wall of steel" against the Arabs and to crush their resistance by force.)

23.This total contradiction in the perception of the facts affects every aspect of the conflict. For example, the Jews interpreted their struggle for "Jewish Labor" as a progressive social effort to transform a nation of merchants and speculators into one of workers and farmers. The Arabs, on the other hand, saw it as a criminal attempt by the Zionists to dispossess them, to evict them from the labor market and to create, on their land, an Arab-free, separatist Jewish economy.

24.The Zionists were proud of their "Redemption of the Land". They had purchased it for full value with money collected from Jews around the world. "Olim" (new immigrants, literally pilgrims) who had been intellectuals and merchants in their former life, now earned their living with the sweat of their brow. They believed that they had achieved all this by peaceful means and without dispossessing a single Arab. For the Arabs this was a cruel narrative of dispossession and expulsion: The Jews acquired lands from rich absentee Arab landowners and then forcibly evicted the fellahin who had, for generations, been living on and earning their living from these lands. To help them in this effort, the Zionists engaged the Turkish and, later, the British police. The Arabs looked on, despairingly, as their land was taken from them.

25.Against the Zionist claim of having successfully "turned the desert into a garden", the Arabs cited the testimonies of European travelers who spoke of a Palestine that, for several centuries, had described Palestine as a populated and flourishing land, the equal of any of its regional neighbors.

Independence and Disaster

26.The contrast between the two national versions peaked in the war of 1948, a war called "the War of Independence" or even "the War of Liberation" by the Jews, and "El Naqba", the disaster, by the Arabs.

27.As the conflict intensified in the region, and with the resounding impact of the Holocaust, the United Nations decided to divide the country into two States, Jewish and Arab. Jerusalem and its environs were supposed to remain a separate unit, under international jurisdiction. The Jews were allotted 55% of the land including the unpopulated Negev.

28.The Zionist Movement accepted the partition plan, convinced that the crucial issue was to establish a firm foundation for Jewish sovereignty. In closed meetings, David Ben-Gurion never concealed his intention to expand, at the first opportunity, the territory given to the Jews. That is why Israel’s Declaration of Independence did not define the country’s borders and the country has remained without definite borders to this day.

29.The Arab world did not accept the partition plan and regarded it a vile attempt of the United Nations, which essentially was at the time a club of Western and Communist nations, to divide a country that did not belong to it. Handing over most of the country to the Jewish minority, which represented a mere third of the population, made it all the more unforgivable in their eyes.

30.The war initiated by the Arabs after the partition plan was, inescapably, an "ethnic" war; a kind of war in which each side seeks to conquer as much land as possible and evict the population of the other side. Such a campaign (which later came to be called "ethnic cleansing") always involves expulsion and atrocities.

31.The war of 1948 was a direct extension of the Zionist-Arab conflict in which each side sought to fulfill its aims. The Jews wanted to establish a homogenous, national State that would be as large as possible. The Arabs wanted to eradicate the Zionist Jewish entity that had been established in Palestine.

32.Both sides practiced ethnic cleansing as an integral part of the fighting. There were not many Arabs remaining in territories captured by the Jews and no Jews remained in territories captured by the Arabs. However, as the territories captured by the Jews were by far larger than those captured by the Arabs, the result was unbalanced. (The ideas of "population exchange" and "transfer" were raised in Zionist organizations as early as in the 1930’s. Effectively this meant the expulsion of the Arab population from the country. On the other side, many among the Arabs believed that the Zionists should go back to wherever they came from.)

33.The myth of "the few against the many" was cultivated by the Jews to describe the stand of the Jewish community of 650,000 against the entire Arab world of over a hundred million. The Jewish community lost 1% of its people in the war. The Arabs painted a completely different picture: A fragmented Arab population with no national leadership to speak of, with no unified command over its meager forces, with poor, few and mostly obsolete weapons, confronting an extremely well organized Jewish community that was highly trained in the use of its weapons. The neighboring Arab countries betrayed the Palestinians and, when they finally did send their armies, they primarily operated in competition with each other, with no coordination and no common plan. From the social and military point of view, the fighting capabilities of the Israeli side were far superior to those of the Arab states, which had hardly emerged from the colonial era.

34.According to the United Nations plan, the Jewish State was supposed to include an Arab population amounting to about 40%. During the war the Jewish State expanded its borders and ended up with 78% of the area of the land. This area was nearly devoid of Arabs. The Arab populations of Nazareth and a few villages in the Galilee remained almost incidentally; the villages in the Triangle had been given to Israel as part of a deal by King Abdullah and, therefore, could not be evacuated.

35.In the war a total of 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted. Some of them fled out of fear of the battle, as civilian populations do in every war. Some were driven away by acts of terror such as the Dir-Yassin Massacre. Others were systematically evicted in the course of the ethnic cleansing.

36.No less important than the expulsion is the fact that the refugees were not allowed to return to their homes when the battles were over, as is the practice after a conventional war. Quite to the contrary, the new Israel saw the removal of the Arabs very much as a blessing and proceeded to totally demolish 450 Arab villages. New Jewish villages were built on the ruins, and new Hebrew names were given to them. The abandoned houses in the cities were repopulated with new immigrants.

"A Jewish State"

37.The signing of the cease-fire agreements at the end of the war of 1948 did not bring an end to the historical conflict. That was, in fact, raised to new and more intensive levels.

38.The new State of Israel dedicated its early years to the consolidation of its homogenous national character as a "Jewish State". Large sections of land were expropriated from the "absentees" (the refugees), from those officially designed as "present absentees" (Arabs who physically remained in Israel but were not allowed to become citizens) and even from the Arab citizens of Israel, most of whose lands were taken over. On these lands a dense network of Jewish communities was created. Jewish "Immigrants" were invited and even coaxed to come in masses. This great effort fortified the State’s power several times over in but a few years.

39.At the same time the State vigorously conducted a policy to obliterate the Palestinian entity as a national entity. With Israeli help, the Trans-Jordan monarch, Abdullah, took control over the West Bank and since then there is, in effect, an Israeli military guarantee for the existence of the Kingdom of Jordan.

40.The main rationale of the treaty between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom, which has been in effect for three generations, was to prevent the establishment of an independent Arab-Palestinian State, which was considered "then and now" as an obstacle to the realization of the Zionist objective.

41.A historical change occurred at the end of the 1950’s on the Palestinian side when Yasser Arafat and his associates founded the Fatah Movement designed to free the Palestinian liberation movement from the custody of the Arab governments. It was no accident that this movement emerged after the failure of the great Pan-Arab concept whose most renowned representative was Gamal Abd-el- Nasser. Up to this point many Palestinians had hoped to be absorbed into a united All-Arab Nation. When this hope faded, the separate National Palestinian identity re-emerged.

42.The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was created by Gamal Abd-el- Nasser to prevent autonomous Palestinian action that might involve him in an undesired war with Israel. The organization was intended to impose Egyptian authority over the Palestinians. However, after the Arab defeat in the June 1967 war, Fatah, led by Yasser Arafat, took control over the PLO and has been the sole representative of the Palestinian people ever since.

"The Six Day War"

43.The June 1967 war is seen in a very different light by the two sides, as has every incident in the last 120 years. According to the Israeli myth, this was a desperate war of defense, which miraculously placed a lot of land in Israel’s hands. According to the Palestinian myth, the leaders of Egypt, Syria and Jordan fell into a trap set by Israel in order to capture whatever was left of Palestine.

44.Many Israelis believe that "the Six Day War" was the root of all evil and it was only then that the peace-loving and progressive Israel turned into a conqueror and an occupier. This conviction allows them to maintain the absolute purity of Zionism and the State of Israel up to that point in history and preserve their old myths. There is no truth to this legend.

45.The war of 1967 was yet another phase of the old struggle between the two national movements. It did not change the essence; it only changed the circumstances. The essential objectives of the Zionist Movement-- a Jewish State, expansion, and settlement-- were making great strides. The particular circumstances made extensive ethnic cleansing impossible in this war, but several hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were nevertheless expelled.

46.Israel was allotted 55% of the land (Palestine) by the 1947 partition plan, an additional 23% were captured in the 1948 war and now the remaining 22%, across the "Green Line: (the pre-1967 armistice line), were also captured. In 1967 Israel inadvertently united the Palestinian people (including some of the refugees) under its rule.

47.As soon as the war ended, the Settlement Movement began. Almost every political faction in the country participated in this movement --from the messianic-nationalistic "Gush Emunim" to the "leftist" United Kibbutz Movement. The first settlers received broad support from most politicians, left and right, from Yigal Alon (the Jewish settlement in Hebron) to Shimon Peres (the Kdumim settlement).

48.The fact that all governments of Israel cultivated and advanced the settlements, albeit to differing extents, proves that the settlement aspiration was restricted to no specific ideological camp and extended to the entire Zionist Movement. The impression that has been created of a small minority driving the Settlement Movement is illusionary. Only a consolidated effort on the part of all Government Agencies since 1967 and till today could have produced the legislative, the strategic and the budgetary infrastructure required for such a long-lasting and expensive endeavor.

49.The legislative infrastructure incorporates the misleading assumption that the Occupation Authority is the owner of "government-owned lands", although these are the essential land reserves of the Palestinian population. It is self- evident that the Settlement Movement contravenes International Law.

50.The dispute between the proponents of the "Greater Israel" and those of "Territorial Compromise" is essentially a dispute about the way to achieve the basic Zionist aspiration: a homogenous Jewish State in as large a territory as possible. The proponents of"“compromise" emphasize the demographic issue and want to prevent the inclusion of the Palestinian population in the State. The "Greater Israel" adherents place the emphasis on the geographic issue and believe (privately or publicly) that it is possible to expel the non-Jewish population from the country (code name: "Transfer").

51.The General Staff of the Israeli army played an important role in the planning and building of the Settlements. It created the map of the settlements (identified with Ariel Sharon): blocs of settlements and bypass roads, lateral and longitudinal, so that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are chopped up into pieces and the Palestinians are imprisoned in isolated enclaves, each of which is surrounded by settlements and the occupation forces.

52.The Palestinians employed several methods of resistance, mainly raids across the Jordanian and Lebanese borders and attacks inside Israel and everywhere in the world. These acts are called "terrorist" by the Israelis while the Palestinians see them as the legitimate resistance of an occupied nation. The PLO leadership, headed by Yasser Arafat, had long been considered a terrorist leadership by the Israelis but has gradually come to be internationally recognized as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people.

53.When the Palestinians realized that these actions do not put an end to the settlement momentum, which gradually pulled the land from under their feet, at the end of 1987 they launched the Intifadah -- a grassroots uprising of all sectors of the population. In this Intifidah, 1500 Palestinians were killed, among them hundreds of children, several times over the number of Israeli losses.

The Peace Process

54.The October 1973 war, which commenced with the surprise victory of the Egyptian and Syrian forces and culminated with their defeat, convinced Yasser Arafat and his close associates that there is no military way to achieve the national Palestinian objectives. He decided to embark upon a political path to reach agreement with Israel and to allow, at least, a partial achievement of the national goals through negotiation.

55.To prepare the ground for this, Arafat created contact for the first time with Israeli personalities who could make an impact on public opinion and on government policy in Israel. His emissaries (Said Hamami and Issam Sartawi) met with Israeli public figures, the peace pioneers who in 1975 established the "Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace".

56.These contacts as well as the growing fatigue felt by the Israelis of the Intifadah, the Jordanian withdrawal from the West Bank, changing international conditions (the collapse of the Communist Bloc, the Gulf War) led to the Madrid Conference and, later, to the Oslo Agreement.

The Oslo Agreement

57.The Oslo Agreement had positive and negative qualities.

58.On the positive side, this agreement brought Israel to its first official recognition of the Palestinian People and its national leadership and brought the National Palestinian Movement to its recognition of the existence of Israel. In this respect the agreement (and the exchange of letters that preceded it) were of paramount historical significance.

59.In effect, the agreement gave the National Palestinian Movement a territorial base on Palestinian land, the structure of a "state in the making" and armed forces-- facts that would play an important role in the ongoing Palestinian struggle. For the Israelis, the agreement opened the gates to the Arab world and put an end to Palestinian attacks --as long as the agreement was effective.

60.The most substantive flaw in the agreement was that both sides hoped to achieve entirely different objectives. The Palestinians saw it as a temporary agreement paving the way to the end of the occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian State in all the occupied territories. On the other hand, the respective Israeli governments regarded it as a way to maintain the occupation in large sections of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with the Palestinian self-government filling the role of an auxiliary security agency protecting Israel and the settlements.

61.Therefore, Oslo did not represent the beginning of the process to end the conflict but, rather, another new phase of the conflict.

62.Because the expectations of both sides were so divergent and each remained entirely bound to its own national "narrative", every section of the agreement was interpreted differently. Ultimately, many parts of the agreement were not carried out, mainly by Israel (the third withdrawal, the four safe passages, and others).

63.Throughout the period of the "Oslo Process" Israel continued its vigorous expansion of the settlements, primarily by creating new ones under various guises, expanding existing ones, building an elaborate network of "bypass" roads, expropriating land, demolishing houses and uprooting plantations etc. The Palestinians, on their part, used the time to build their strength, both within the framework of the agreement and without it. In fact, the historical confrontation continued unabated under the guise of negotiations and the "Peace Process", which became a proxy for actual peace.

64.In contradistinction to his image, which became more pronounced after his assassination, Yitzhak Rabin kept the conflict alive "in the field", while simultaneously managing the political process to achieve peace, on Israeli terms. As he was a disciple of the Zionist "narrative" and accepted its mythology, he suffered from cognitive dissonance when his hopes for peace clashed with his conceptual world. It appears that he began to internalize some parts of the Palestinian historical narrative only at the very end of his life.

65.The case of Shimon Peres is much more severe. He created for himself an international image of a peacemaker and even designed his language to reflect this image ("the New Middle East") while remaining essentially a traditional Zionist hawk. This became clear in the short and violent period that he served as Prime Minister after the assassination of Rabin and, again, in his current acceptance of the role of spokesman and apologist for Sharon.

66.The clearest expression of the Israeli dilemma was provided by Ehud Barak who came to power completely convinced of his ability to cut the Gordian knot of the historical conflict in one dramatic stroke, in the fashion of Alexander the Great. Barak approached the issue in total ignorance of the Palestinian narrative and with disrespect to its importance. He presented his proposals as ultimatums and was appalled and enraged by their rejection.

67.In the eyes of himself and the Israeli side at large, Barak "turned every stone" and made the Palestinians "more generous offers than any previous Prime Minister". In exchange, he wanted the Palestinians to sign off on "an end to the conflict". The Palestinians considered this a preposterous pretension since Barak was effectively asking them to relinquish their basic national aspiration, such as the Right of Return and sovereignty in East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Moreover, while Barak presented the claims for the annexation of territories as matter of negligible percentages ("Settlement Blocs"), according to Palestinian calculations this amounted to an actual annexation of 20% of the land beyond the Green Line.

68.In the Palestinian view, they had already made the decisive compromise by agreeing to establish their State within the Green Line, in merely 22% of their historical homeland. Therefore, they could only accept minor border changes in the context of territorial swaps. The traditional Israeli position is that the achievements of the war of 1948 are established facts that cannot be disputed and the compromise required must focus on the remaining 22%.

69.As with most terms and concepts, the word "concession" has different meanings for both sides. The Palestinians believe that they have already "conceded" 78% of their land when they agreed to accept 22% of it. The Israelis believe that they are "conceding" when they agree to "give" the Palestinians parts of those same 22% (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip).

70.The Camp David Summit in the summer of 2000, which was imposed on Arafat against his will, was premature and brought things to a climax. Barak’s demands, presented at the summit as Clinton’s, were that the Palestinians agree to end the conflict by conceding the Right of Return and the Return itself; to accept complicated arrangements for East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount without achieving sovereignty over them; to agree to large territorial annexations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and to an Israeli military presence in other large areas and to Israeli control over the borders separating the Palestinian State from the rest of the world. No Palestinian leader would ever sign such an agreement and thus the summit ended in deadlock and the termination of the careers of Clinton and Barak.

The El-Aqsa Intifadah

71.The breakdown of the summit, the elimination of any hope for an agreement between the two sides and the unconditional pro-Israeli stance of the Americans, inevitably led to another round of violent confrontations, which earned the title of the El-Aqsa Intifadah. For the Palestinians, this is a justified national uprising against the protracted occupation, which has no end in sight and allows continual and daily pulling of their land from under their feet. For the Israelis, this is an outburst of murderous terrorism. The performers of these acts appear to the Palestinians as national heroes and to the Israelis as merciless criminals who must be liquidated.

72.The official media in Israel no longer mention settlers but speak of "residents" upon whom any attack is a crime against civilians. The Palestinians consider the settlers the forefront of a dangerous enemy force whose intention is to dispossess them of their land and who must be defeated.

73.A great part of the Israeli "Peace Camp" collapsed during the al-Aqsa Intifadah and it turns out that many of its convictions had feet of clay. Especially after Barak had "turned every stone" and made "more generous offers than any previous Prime Minister", the Palestinian behavior was incomprehensible to this part of the "Peace Camp", since it had never performed a thorough revision of the Zionist "narrative" and did not internalize the fact that there is a Palestinian "narrative" too. The only remaining explanation was that the Palestinians had deceived the Israeli Peace Camp, that they had never intended to make peace and that their true purpose is to throw the Jews into the sea, as the Zionist right has always claimed.

74.As a result, the dividing line between the Zionist "right" and "left" disappeared. The leaders of the Labor Party joined the Sharon Government and became his most effective apologists (Shimon Peres) and even the formal leftist opposition (Yossi Sarid) took part. This again proves that the Zionist narrative is the decisive factor unifying all facets of the political system in Israel, making the distinctions between Rehavam Zeevi and Avraham Burg, Yitzhak Levi and Yossi Sarid insignificant.

75.There is a notable decline in the Palestinian willingness to reopen a dialogue with the Israeli peace forces, a consequence of the utter disappointment from the "leftist government" which had inspired so much hope after the Netanyahu years, as well as a consequence of the fact that apart from the small radical peace groups no Israeli outrage at the brutal reactions of the occupation forces has been heard. The tendency to tighten ranks, typical to any nation in a war of liberation, makes it possible for the extreme nationalistic and religious forces on the Palestinian side to veto any attempt at Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.

A New Peace Camp

76.The breakdown of the old peace camp necessitates the creation of a new Israeli peace camp that will be real, up-to-date, effective and strong, that can influence the Israeli public and bring about a complete re-evaluation of the old axioms in order to effect a change in the Israeli political system.

77.To do so, the new peace camp must lead public opinion to a brave reassessment of the national "narrative" and rid it of false myths. It must strive to unite the historical versions of both people into a single "narrative", free from historical deceptions, which will be acceptable to both sides.

78.While doing this it must also educate the Israeli public that along with all the beautiful and positive aspects of the Zionist enterprise, a terrible injustice was done to the Palestinian people. This injustice, which peaked during the "Naqba", obliges us to assume responsibility and correct as much of it as is possible.

79.With a new understanding of the past and the present, the new peace camp must formulate a peace plan based on the following principles:

(i)An independent and free Palestinian State will be established alongside Israel.

(ii)The Green Line will be the border between the two States. If agreed between the two sides, limited territorial exchanges may be possible.

(iii)The Israeli settlements will be evacuated from the territory of the Palestinian State.

(iv)The border between the two States will be open to the movement of people and goods, subject to arrangements made by mutual agreement.

(v)Jerusalem will be the capital of both States-- West Jerusalem the capital of Israel and East Jerusalem capital of Palestine. The State of Palestine will have complete sovereignty in East Jerusalem, including the Haram al-Sharif (the Temple Mount). The State of Israel will have complete sovereignty in West Jerusalem, including the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter. Both States will reach agreement on the unity of the city on the physical, municipal level.

(vi)Israel will recognize, in principle, the Palestinian Right of Return as an inalienable human right. The practical solution to the problem will come about by agreement based on just, fair and practical considerations and will include return to the territory of the State of Palestine, return to the State of Israel and compensation.

(vii)The water resources will be controlled jointly and allocated by agreement, equally and fairly.

(viii)A security agreement between the two States will ensure the security of both and take into consideration the specific security needs of Israel as well as of Palestine.

(ix)Israel and Palestine will cooperate with other States in the region, to establish a Middle Eastern community, modeled on the European Union.

80.The signing of a Peace agreement and its honest implementation in good faith will lead to a historical reconciliation between the two nations, based on equality, cooperation and mutual respect.

Submitted by Gush Shalom as a draft for public debate. If you generally agree with the spirit of this document please send comments and remarks. Gush Shalom info@gush-shalom.org P.O.Box 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033. Hebrew and English versions can be downloaded from http://www.gush-shalom.org. Please help us to finance this campaign by sending a check to Gush Shalom.